Saturday, September 20, 2014

I'm not sure if someone thought that the light dust up in George Square after the Independence Referendum was somehow any indication of Scotland handling this issue in an "uncivilised manner".

FYI, It doesn't take too much to start a fight in Glasgow. I should probably be proud that I have never been in one while there. Glasgow has had to live with an often deserved reputation for trouble with "booze and blades" for generations. There is "an inherent culture of knife crime, and violence, giving it the title of being the “Murder Capital of Europe"".

In other words, It doesn't take too much to start an "ugly scene" there.

Although, I have to admit a bit of surprise that the people causing the "ugly scene" were Unionists, since they were winning. I would have thought the people getting ugly would have been the pro-Independence side being sore losers. The Unionists were winning--why cause trouble? Just get drunk and...

But, as I said, it doesn't take too much to start a fight in Glasgow. Fuel the rage with alcohol and you are sure to have a fight on your hands.

Well, no one was killed and the knifing seem to be only a rumour.

It was just a light dust up by Glaswegian standards.

And a light dust up is a very different thing from armed voter intimidation.

A
20-month-old boy shot through the shoulder while riding in a stroller
last week in East Oakland was wounded after a pistol accidentally fell
from his father's pocket and went off when it hit the pavement,
authorities said Thursday.

Authorities said the boy's father, Onisema Tua, 23, has been
charged with three felony counts in the shooting: child abuse likely to
cause great bodily harm, carrying a concealed firearm and carrying a
loaded firearm.

Tua has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is scheduled to
appear in court Thursday. He is being held at Santa Rita Jail on
$180,000 bail. Officer Mike Troupe, the lead investigator, said a remorseful Tua
admitted his involvement but did not turn the gun over to police.

Troupe
said Tua said he carried the gun for protection.

The shooting happened about noon Sept. 11 in the 2600 block of
77th Avenue as Tua, his wife and the boy were walking home from Eastmont
Town Center. The boy was in a stroller being pushed by Tua.

Police said Tua had a semi-automatic pistol in his front pants
pocket. As they were going up a hill, the gun got loose and fell from
the pocket, going off when it hit the pavement, police said.

Friday, September 19, 2014

From Mother JonesYeah, I know there's an atteribution to Mother Jones and I don't take credit for it, but some people are so stupid that if you don't attribute something in a way that is so obvious, they will accuse you of plagiarism.

I think it is a safe assertion that when you behave as MacDonald did, not only on this occasion but on other occasions, the status of sanity is legitimately in question. You'd have to be seriously nuts to vote for this horrible woman.

But I'm sure that some teabaggers will; after all, she waved a Bible around, and she's pro-gun.

Monica Wehby's campaign on Wednesday acknowledged problems with plagiarism in some of her issue documents and removed them from her website.
Her campaign blamed a former staffer, and it was clear from the
context that Wehby and her aides were referring to her former campaign
manager, Charlie Pearce, who is now running Dennis Richardson's campaign
for governor.

Pearce, who was clearly irked, denied having anything to do
with the problem. "I did not author the health care policy or economic
policy plans," he said in an interview.

The Wehby campaign scrubbed the issue papers from its website shortly after BuzzFeed reported that chunks of her economic plan closely
followed wording from a report by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. Some
portions also used the same wording as a plan by a 2012 GOP
congressional candidate from California.

A day earlier, the web publication had reported that a seven-point health care plan released by Wehby last year mimicked much of the wording of a survey taken for a group run by GOP consultant Karl Rove.

Wehby spokesman Dean Petrone had called the health care
charge "absurd." But following the second BuzzFeed report, Petrone
issued this statement:

"These
website pages were authored by staff that are no longer employed by the
campaign and were immediately removed once brought to our attention.

That put the attention on Pearce, who assembled Wehby's
initial campaign staff and was listed as the contact on press releases
detailing the health care and economy plans. He left in a big staff shakeup after the primary when Wehby was struggling to get past controversy over calls to the police made by her former husband and an ex-boyfriend complaining about her behavior.

Petrone, who did not respond on the record to Pearce's
statement, denied that Wehby or anyone currently connected to the
campaign had anything to do with writing the plans.

However, Petrone said Wehby "stands by the positions she's
taken and the ideas. The act of what was done, she had no role in
that."

UPDATE: An email
obtained by The Oregonian containing the original Word document draft of
the economic policy appears to show that it was written by an employee
at Meridian Pacific, a consulting firm working for Wehby, and not by
Pearce. John Peschong, a partner in the firm, told the Salem
Statesman-Journal that he couldn't authenticate that the document was produced by his firm and said he couldn't reach the person named in the Word document, who no longer works for Meridian.

Nice piece of work, Wehby plagiarizes BOTH her health plan, AND her economic plan, and then tries to blame someone else who was NOT responsible. Clearly, this woman has problems telling the truth, and we should not be taking her word for ANYTHING. (Shame on the NRA AND the GOP for endorsing this woman!)

Monica Wehby deserves to be bounced to the curb, not sent to the Senate for Oregon.

If you wonder why I prefer the UK to the US. Yesterday's referendum was carried out in a peaceful manner, despite strong sentiments on both sides.

On the other hand, it seems that in the US some people feel that they have a right to prevent people from voting. I believe there are federal laws which prevent this sort of activity, but still:

In Wisconsin, it is a Class I felony to use or threaten to use force, violence, or restraint to compel a person to vote or not vote in an election. It is also a felony to impede or prevent someone’s ability to vote in an election, to bribe voters, or to coerce someone to vote for a particular candidate or ballot measure.

Voter intimidation is also illegal under federal law. The Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act make it a crime for election officials to attempt to “intimidate, threaten, or coerce” anyone from voting or attempting to vote, or registering to vote.

Call the police immediately if you see these people.

In fact, contact and file a report with the DoJ's Civil Rights Division:

Oregon Republican Senate candidate Monica Wehby, already trailing in
the polls against Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, is now dealing with a
fresh plagiarism scandal involving her health care and economic plans.
The campaign has pulled down portions of its website after news reports
revealed instances of language pulled from other sources.
This week, Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski
noticed that the health care plan on Wehby’s campaign site was largely
identical to a survey conducted by Karl Rove’s political group
Crossroads GPS. That would have been embarassing for any candidate, but
Wehby has been running on her health care expertise based on her career
as a successful pediatric neurosurgeon. It didn’t help that Wehby’s
campaign offered up a flip response to the initial allegation.“The suggestion that a pediatric neurosurgeon needs to copy a health care plan
from American Crossroads is absurd,” a Wehby spokeswoman told Buzzfeed.
“Dr. Wehby is too busy performing brain surgery on sick children to
respond, sorry.”

They couldn’t ignore it for long, however, especially after Buzzfeed discovered the economic plan posted on Wehby’s site also lifted language
from several other Republican sources and the story spread across local
Oregon outlets. On Wednesday, the campaign removed portions of its
website and blamed a former staffer for the issues.

...“The Wehby campaign wants Oregonians to believe Wehby hadn’t read her
own health care and economic plans until today,” Merkley campaign
manager Alex Youn told the newspaper in a statement. “That’s ridiculous …
This is her policy platform, and it’s the reason she is running.”
Wehby was considered one of the top Republican Senate recruits at the
start of her campaign thanks to an appealing biography and a handful of
moderate positions (she’s a rare pro-choice
GOP candidate) that could play well in blue-leaning Oregon. But her
campaign never caught fire, beset early on by revelations that Wehby had
been accused of harassment by her ex-husband and an ex-boyfriend.
Recently, Freedom Partners, a Koch-backed political group that has
backed Wehby, canceled planned October ads, an indication that big money
donors may be giving up on the race. While polling is relatively scarce
in the race, surveys have consistently given Merkely a double-digit lead for months.

Cowards blame others for their mistake. The not-so-good doctor is responsible for her own damn health plan, and if she expects to go play with the big kids in Congress, she damned well better learn to read what goes over her name -- especially if she does not write it. The woman lacks integrity as well as any original thinking, on top of her dubious medical expertise.

No wonder the NRA supports her -- it appears she is pro-gun, and apparently opposes limiting guns for stalkers, since she is accused of being one herself.

Yup, the NRA endorses people who perform unnecessary surgeries, but run on their medical expertise, and who are pro-gun -- but also stalkers, and let's round that up with a lack of integrity in plagiarism, and a refusal to take responsibility.

I'd have a modicum of respect if Wehby just admitted she borrowed from multiple sources, but she doesn't -- and she doesn't have the courage even to address the topic herself.

• On September 6, an off-duty cop accidentally fired a round
inside the restroom of a Target in Honolulu. The bullet bounced off a
stall door before drilling another stall. He allegedly called 911, but
the incident never appeared in the police department's public reports,
leading TV station KHON2 to wonder if somebody tried to cover up the mishap.

• In June, a veteran detective with New Jersey's Camden County
Prosecutor's Office shot himself in the leg at his office's loo. Informs
the South Jersey Times:
"Prosecutor's office spokesman Jason Laughlin confirmed the accidental
shooting on Monday. However, he said he could not confirm a Philadelphia Inquirer report stating the detective was seated or about to sit when the gun fired."• A man was walking to the bathroom (OK, this one squeaks by) in April in Attleboro, Massachusetts, when the gun in his pocket went off. The bullet hit him and then struck his wife in the foot, says the Sun Chronicle, sending both to the hospital.

• In December, a man had to be carted away in an ambulance from an Italian restaurant in Kentucky when his concealed weapon punched a new hole in his body. Reports the News-Enterprise:
"He set his pistol on the toilet paper dispenser while using the
restroom and it slipped off and shot him in the leg, said Elizabethtown
Police Sgt. David Neary."

• Last spring, customers at a Burger King in Manchester
Township, Pennsylvania, were shocked by what sounded like a "cannon
going off" in the men's room. The source, writes the York Dispatch,
was a guy whose 9mm pistol discharged, sending him into a panic as he
tried to flee through an emergency exit (and then, when it wouldn't
open, the front door).

A grandfather shot and killed his daughter and six grandchildren at
his Florida home on Thursday before turning his gun on himself, law
enforcement officials in Florida said.

The children’s ages ranged from three months to 10 years, Gilchrist
County sheriff Robert Schultz said at a press conference in Bell, a
small town in central Florida about 30 miles west of Gainesville.Schultz named the killer as Don C Spirit, 51, a town resident who
called 911 at about 4pm making threats against his family and himself.
He was alive when the first sheriff’s deputy arrived at the house,
Schultz said, but killed himself soon after.

The Orlando Sentinel reported
that in 2001 a man named Don C Spirit accidentally shot and killed his
eight-year-old son Kyle with a high powered rifle in a hunting accident.
Florida Department of Corrections records show he was released from
jail in 2006 after serving three years for firearms offences relating to
that incident.

It will be hard for someone who describes himself as British if Scotland separates from the United Kingdom. Although, there are people from the Western Isles and Shetland who are saying that those regions do not support independence.

They are saying that there is 95% turnout in some areas, but there is a queue outside the Glasgow Apple store for the new iPhone....

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

UPDATE: Michelle MacDonald was convicted of obstruction of justice relating to her DUI arrest, a gross misdemeanor.
------------We are told that the pro-gunners are always so law abiding, responsible and safe.
They are not. In a recent post, my co-blogger Laci took an Oregon candidate endorsed by the NRA to task, both for her arguably poor judgement and for becoming a candidate while embroiled in a felony trial.
She is not the only one.

(Saint Paul Pioneer Press (MN) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sept. 17--What started as a cordial Rosemount traffic stop ended with Michelle MacDonald screaming at police officers to get their hands off her as they pulled her from her car and accusing them of lying to trump up the charges against her.

Video and audio of MacDonald's April 2013 arrest were played Tuesday
during her drunken-driving trial in Dakota County District Court in
Hastings. She is also charged with refusing a blood-alcohol test,
obstructing the legal process and speeding.

The case is expected to go to the jury Wednesday after closing arguments.

A family law attorney, MacDonald was endorsed in May by the state
Republican Party as a Minnesota Supreme Court candidate. She had a
falling-out with party leaders after her criminal charges were widely
reported.

The video shown in court was from his dashboard camera. MacDonald was heard but not seen for much of it.

The stop began in routine fashion: Eckstein said hello and asked if MacDonald knew how fast she was going.

She said she didn't. Almost immediately, she then identified herself as
"a reserve cop."
The term is used for nonsworn volunteer officers who assist with limited
police duties. MacDonald was not one. She later said she misspoke and
meant instead that she had attended a citizens police academy.

In his testimony, Eckstein said the remark made him suspicious.

"Typically, when somebody tells me that right away, they're either trying to hide something or lying about something," he said.

In the video, Eckstein then told MacDonald that he smelled a slight odor
of alcohol. She said she hadn't had anything to drink. Eckstein said he
wanted her to step out of the car for a field sobriety test.

MacDonald said she lived nearby and was just going to go home.

From there, the conversation spiraled into repetition and argument.
Eckstein laid out multiple times why he had stopped MacDonald; she
repeated again and again that she wasn't getting out of the car and
wanted to go home. She said she would walk home if she weren't allowed
to drive.

At one point, she said: "I'm an attorney. I do a lot of practice in
Dakota County, and I'm not liking this."
Eckstein called in another officer, Sgt. Bryan Burkhalter, to assist
him. When MacDonald stayed in the car, the officers then arrested her,
opening the car doors and pulling her from the vehicle.

She shouted, "Leave me alone!" and "Get your hands off me!" as they did so.

"Is this for real?" she asked. "Are you guys doing this to me?"
At the police station, MacDonald continued to argue -- often emotionally
and loudly -- that she should be let go. She was a good citizen, she
said, and the officers had nothing better to do than fabricate
accusations against her.

She did not take a blood-alcohol breath test in the time allotted. About
4:25 a.m., she obtained a private blood test from a hospital that
showed a blood-alcohol concentration of less than 0.01 -- the lowest
reading the test could give.

Her attorney, Stephen Grigsby, focused his cross-examination of the
officers on whether they had probable cause to arrest her for drunken
driving. He maintains that they did not and that they simply became
frustrated with her exercising her right to stay in the car.

In Minnesota, MacDonald must be well aware that for refusing to take some form of test - breathalyzer, blood test, or urine test, etc., she can lose her drivers license.
I find this case particularly interesting having just served jury duty on a DUI case. MacDonald then (allegedly) was arrested having violated the terms of the sentence for the DUI case.

But this is not the only legal problems that MacDonald is facing. She is something of a right wing nut job, and such a poor candidate that the MN GOP has tried to dump her after endorsing her.
So Michelle MacDonald filed a complaint against her own party -- and LOST.

MacDonald also filed a motion to allow cameras in the courtroom for her trial, and lost that motion also. MacDonald is arguably not a very successful practitioner of the legal profession, in my personal opinion.

Michelle MacDonald also tried to crash the MN GOP booth at the state fair, creating a scene that clearly argues the woman lacks judicial temperament at the very least, and both bad taste and worse judgement.

MacDonald is primarily a family court attorney, but wants to abolish the family court system. Not sure how someone adopts a child, or gets a divorce without family court, but apparently MacDonald doesn't care.

MacDonald also is one of the Bible thumper crowd who want to insert religion into our judicial system -- specifically HER religion, not yours or mine or someone else's (or choice not to embrace a religion). And of course, she is pro-2A, although I'm not sure this nut job could discuss it with any intelligence or knowledge.

But conservatives of the crazy stripe -- and the part of Minnesota that elected that OTHER Michele shows they exist in some numbers -- will love her position on abortion, guns, and hating the government system she wants to join. And the NRA should love her -- one more bat-shit crazy to stuff and put on a shelf alongside Ted Nugent and the other whackos.

Maybe that is the question the political advisors for Monica Wehby who is running for US Senate from Oregon should have asked before hitting the hustings, but they obviously didn't.

It seems there is a medical child abuse case out there which she is a party to in Multnomah County. As far as I know this case has not been decided.

But here is the short form:

Wehby’s practice has been controversial within
the small circle of pediatric neurosurgeons, in part because she is
willing to perform tethered cord surgery when other surgeons would not,
such as when a radiologist tells her the MRI results don’t appear to
support it. She says that’s because MRI technology is limited, and she
can usually tell when a child suffers tethered cord through other means,
including the description of symptoms.

Jim Moore, a Pacific
University government and elections professor, said the timing of the
Parker case could be a problem for Wehby.

"It raises questions
about her judgment, and for the last 25 years voters have said judgment
is very important," Moore said. "And remember, she's not very well known
in this state. She's staking her whole campaign on her expertise in
health care and her

competence. So this is going to raise questions
about the center of who she says she is.

Personally, I think that this is a great way to dodge the elephant in the room. I have to admit that I am curious as to how the campaign will handle the issue of the pending criminal case. As far as I can tell, this case is still pending.

Or if the NRA will do anything in light of that case.

Of course, the NRA backs some real winners.

For more information about Dr. Wehny's connection to this case See also:

Jessica Ghawi was among 12 people killed and 70 wounded in a 2012 shooting at an Aurora, Colo. movie theater.

CBS

The parents of a woman killed in the Colorado theater shootings
filed a lawsuit Tuesday accusing four online retailers of improperly
selling ammunition, tear gas, a high-capacity magazine and body armor
used in the attack. The lawsuit alleges it was illegal and negligent to sell the gear
to James Holmes, who is accused of killing 12 people and injuring 70 in
the July 20, 2012, attack.

It says the companies had no safeguards to keep dangerous people from buying their goods.
"It was highly foreseeable to (the) defendants that their potential
customers included persons with criminal intent, including persons such
as James Holmes," the lawsuit says.

The suit was filed by Sandy and Lonnie Phillips of San Antonio, whose daughter, Jessica Ghawi, was among the dead.

The parents are represented by attorneys for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and two Denver lawyers.

Named as defendants in the case are Lucky Gunner of Knoxville,
Tennessee, Bullet Proof Body Armor of Tempe, Arizona, BTP Arms of New
Oxford, Pennsylvania, and the Sportsman's Guide of South St. Paul,
Minnesota. None of the companies immediately returned telephone messages
seeking comment.

The lawsuit says Holmes bought at least 4,300
rounds of ammunition from Lucky Gunner's website, bulkammo.com, and 700
rounds of ammunition and a 100-round magazine from the Sportsman's
Guide website.

It says Holmes bought two tear gas grenades from BTP Arms and four pieces of body armor from bulletproofbodyarmorhq.com.

This undated PennDOT identification photo released Tuesday, Sept. 16,
2014, by the Pennsylvania State Police shows Eric Matthew Frein, 31, of
Canadensis, Penn., being sought in Friday's shooting that left one
trooper dead and another critically wounded at a state police barracks
in Blooming Grove. A gunman killed Cpl. Bryon Dickson, 38, and
critically wounded Trooper Alex Douglass outside the barracks during a
late-night shift change, then slipped away. (AP Photo/PennDOT via
Pennsylvania State Police)

Just to remind you, there is actually a world out there: Scotland will soon be voting on independence in another two days.

This is something I have a personal stake in and my opinion is "no".

This is an opinion based upon history and the politics of what will happen if Scotland does go independent.

While some people may look at this with a romantic eye, the reality is much harsher than people outside the UK realise. Well, maybe the CIA does realise it, which makes me think they will have a hand in this.

First off, an independent Scotland will be very liberal. Liberal to the point of becoming a nuclear free zone and kicking the Trident fleet out of the Clyde, which will not please the US. Additionally, it will drain NATO of Scotland's military. That will also bugger England's nuclear capability as they look for another place for the Trident fleet or an alternative to Trident.

If I were a Euroskeptic, this would be a godsend, as a newly independent Scotland will have to apply for membership in the European Union.

If I were conservative, this is a godsend for British Tories as Scotland is a very lefty state. The Scottish Green Party is one of the sponsors of this referendum.

John Oliver gives a good summary of what is at stake, although I have not watched all of this video.

Americans tend to look at independence with a very romantic eye and fail to see the actual political implications (well, except for those in the "elite" who see the issues quite plainly).

I'm surprised that someone I know who is a Scottish Historian, Neil Oliver, hasn't weighed in on this, but he did retweet this post:

Yeah, John Oliver did point out that the pro-Union side sounds like an impending divorce. In some ways, this is like a rocky marriage, with the alternative being worse than staying together. Neither is totally happy with the other.

Or something which people end up regretting if it does pass and the economic ramifications are as bad as predicted.

Scotland and England do have a degree of separation in that there is a slightly different currency (although lord knows what will happen if the Scottish pound breaks from the British Pound). Scotland also has a different legal system from England and Wales.

Personally, I look at it from my perspective as a Jacobite. The King across the water is no longer a viable option, despite the romantic images of the rebellions. Those images are romanticising something which was seriously awful with people being hanged, drawn,and quartered; heads placed on the York City wall, and the driving of many people to a horrible land: North America.

The reality was that Union was born of necessity as Scotland plunged into a serious depression.

Like it or not, the UK is much better together. The day after separation will be far more of a nightmare than the marriage.

Not really, despicable if you can read between the lines to see self-parody gone wild. These are the funniest thing the NRA has come up with to date.

They talk about Media Dishonesty, yet they support a media which uses discredited pundit John Lott regurgitating the material which has been disproven. I'm sure they see Fox News as "honest media" given how they dislike "Public" Media, which is only slightly less honest in that it is actually commercial media.

Anyway, here is Charlie Brooker's Daily Mail Island for what watching too much right wing media can do to your mind.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.Exodus 20: 3-6.

And if you really want a laugh:

Yes, I do believe in the "golden rule (or rule of reciprocity), but the NRA is about the most diametrically opposed organisation to the Golden Rule I can think of. They are the last organisation to try and use the "golden rule" for any purpose.

If you would rather be judges by 12 than carried by six, then you should allow criminals to have their legal right to a trial--not allow for summary execution and vigilante justice.

BTW, the picture above is of a piece by an artist named Al Farrow. I'm not sure what his take is on this. The work is called "Fingernail of the Trigger Finger of Santo Guerro". The picture ended up on a gun loon page as a mash up between Christianity and guns. Maybe that's Mr. Fallow's point.

Sixth-grader Derek Atkinson is in Ferguson-Montgomery’s class and said
he knew she carried a gun because he saw it on her hip when she bent
over in the classroom. The teacher’s nickname is "Iron Woman."Source

The bumbling gun owner shot at the man AS HE SPRINTED AWAY and MISSED him, HITTING another man.

Please take notice, this is something the gun-rights fanatics have claimed has never happened in the history of concealed carry. According to them, only cops do this, concealed carry civilians are inexplicably better at gun management.

A western Colorado woman is
accused of pointing a rifle at several children in a neighboring
backyard because she was upset that an 11-year-old boy was playing his
clarinet outside.

Mesa County
sheriff's deputies believe 60-year-old Cheryl Ann Pifer of Clifton had
been drinking before allegedly threatening the children Wednesday.

The
Daily Sentinel (http://bit.ly/1CZINu5 ) reports that the boy told Pifer
he was practicing the clarinet as part of his homework and couldn't go
back inside his grandmother's house because a baby was sleeping.

Several
of the other children in the backyard with him reported that Pifer also
pointed a gun at them and yelled "Fire in the hole!" as they ran away.

In this 1 June
2007 file photo, Rev Michael Pfleger, left, of Saint Sabina Catholic
church is seen with Rev Jesse Jackson in Chicago.

The GuardianA Catholic priest on Chicago’s South Side claims he has received
death threats from gun-rights advocates following a weekend rally in
front of a local gun shop that authorities say is the number one
supplier of guns recovered from crime scenes in the city.

Father Michael Pfleger, the pastor of Saint Sabina church, says the
threats originate from social media posts and internal emails from the
Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA), an affiliate of the wider
National Rifle Association (NRA), and its supporters which are calling
Pfleger a “terrorist” and likening him and similar advocates to Isis,
the terrorist organisation also known as Islamic State.

The threats escalated last weekend when Pfleger led about 300 people
in front of Chuck’s Gun Shop & Pistol Range in suburban Riverdale,
an effort in coordination with the Brady Centre to Prevent Gun Violence
in Washington. NRA members staged a counter-protest. According to
Pfleger, local police barred his assembly from entering the shop door to
meet with its owner and forced them to walk back and forth between two
assembled NRA groups where they were verbally threatened. He also says
he received many threatening emails and phone calls at his church before
and after the event.

Rich Pearson, the ISRA executive director, says he stands by his effort to label Pfleger a “terrorist”.

“You have to call him what he is. He’s an anti-gun terrorist, he’s
trying to destroy businesses, he’s trying to prevent people from having
the right of self-defence,” Pearson says.

According to local media reports, an internal email sent to ISRA
members painted Pfleger as delivering “frothy-lipped lunacy” and
suggested that “few will forget Pfleger’s rant in front of
Chucks several years ago when he called for the Isis-style murders of
gun shop owners and elected officials who support gun rights.”

Pearson says the Isis reference is connected to comments Pfleger made
several years ago when he suggested he wanted to “snuff out” state
legislators and gun shop owners who refuse to concede to stronger gun
control measures. Pfleger admits he used the phrase, but says he
intended to say he wanted to “sniff out” where gun rights advocates live
to suggest it is not the inner city where their actions have the
severest consequences.

“They keep trying to go back to that [statement], but it is their
manipulation of the word without putting it into the context of the
sentence,” he said. “If you want to own a gun, fine, but for God’s sake,
put some responsibility on the ownership.”

A Utah elementary school teacher who was carrying a concealed firearm at
school was struck by fragments from a bullet and a porcelain toilet
when her gun accidentally fired in a faculty bathroom on Thursday,
officials said.

The sixth-grade teacher at Westbrook Elementary School, in the Salt Lake
City suburb of Taylorsville, was injured when the bullet struck a
toilet and caused it to explode, Granite School District spokesman Ben
Horsley said.

Authorities initially thought the teacher had accidentally shot herself.
They now believe she was injured when the bullet and toilet fragments
struck her lower leg.

The teacher, identified as Michelle Ferguson-Montgomery, was in good
condition Thursday afternoon in a Salt Lake City hospital, Horsley said.

Officials were still investigating how the gun discharged. "This just appears at this point in time to be an accident," he said.

Horsley said Ferguson-Montgomery has been a teacher with the school for
14 years but he did not have her age. She was carrying her gun legally
with a concealed-firearm permit, Horsley said.

Utah is among the few states that allow people with concealed-weapons
permits to carry guns in public schools, according to the National
Conference of State Legislatures. Teachers are not required to disclose
that they are carrying a weapon, and administrators are prohibited from
asking if they carry or barring them from bringing their weapons.

So far, the negligent discharges by teachers seem to be outnumbering the school shootings thwarted. All we need now is one of the idiots to go crazy and shoot up the school themselves.

Design challenges are common in Silicon Valley. Tackling heated political issues is not.
Some recipients of a high-profile contest for "smart gun" designs are refusing to allow themselves to be announced publicly, The Verge has learned, for fear of a backlash from gun rights activists.

A smart gun is a computer-enhanced weapon that authenticates users before allowing them to shoot.
Smart guns may rely on biometric data such as a fingerprint, voice
print, or the unique way the user grips the gun. They can also require a
password or the proximity of another device, such as a wristband.

Proponents say implementing this technology will decrease gun
violence, especially of the type that involves children getting ahold of
their parents' guns.

The Smart Tech Challenges Foundation, a Silicon Valley-based
organization formed in 2013 in order to fund smart gun research,
announced its $1 million competition back in January. "We need the
iPhone of guns," Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway, who is backing the
challenge, said at the time.